Underneath the Mistletoe
by mcmachine
Summary: A Christmas party isn't complete without two things: spiked eggnog and mistletoe.


"Relax, April, it's just a Christmas party."

My hand clapped the back of her shoulder and gave it a small squeeze to try and offer her a little bit of reassurance. Knew that she was always a little uptight and awkward when it came to social gatherings. She had changed some over the few years that I had known her since we had started as residents, but she hadn't in this particular regard. Her shoulders still slouched to shrink herself away from the rest of the crowd and tried to stick in the background of most things. She seemed to be in a constant state of shrinking away from any possible attention.

Meredith and Derek's house was hosting the holiday-themed event. Christmas was a few days away and they had opted to hold a large party at their house, claiming that it was non-secular and I'm sure it was – but Christmas decorations still covered the majority of it, and there was still a well-decorated tree in the corner that I was sure Lexie had been the one to put together. Eggnog was spiked, as was expected given who was throwing the party in the first place. There had been a stream of different hospital workers in and out, primarily the surgical department but a few other familiar faces who had probably heard about it and assumed it was fine for them to come, too. It was a bit nice to be gathered in a place where there weren't any lives in danger.

"Do you want me to go get you a drink? Eggnog?" I asked, glancing down at her and waiting till she nodded her head.

Maneuvering through the crowds of people so I could get over to the table of refreshments, Karev and Yang were already standing around it and hoarding the food. That was no surprise. Neither of them was particularly social either and I was sure they had plenty of inappropriate commentaries to make about everything else that was going on.

Grabbing two empty cups, I poured a generous serving of eggnog in each. I definitely wanted more than enough and I was sure that April was bound to drink it, too, even if she might deny it at first. She was shy but I knew that she always opened up a bit with some social drinking.

"Why are you hanging out with Kepner?" Karev asked as I picked up the glasses.

"There's nothing wrong with her," I commented defensively, shrugging my shoulders.

They still didn't like her. Overall, we had all gotten a little bit closer after the shooting had happened. There was nothing like a tragedy to make things different in the dynamic. But even so, April and I were still on the outskirts. They had all seemed to accept me into the group a little easier than they had her, given that she could be a little bit… quirky from time to time. She had more of a naivety to her than the rest of us did, not so battered by everything else going on. It was a good thing, for sure. She just didn't fit in quite the same because of it.

"Seriously?" Cristina snorted out. "There's more wrong with her than there is right." She disagreed loudly.

"Yeah, there's a screw loose in that one," Alex laughed. "I don't know why she showed up."

"She's just as much a part of this group as we are," I stated, brows forming a slight furrow. "I know that she's a little weird but she's a good person. She's just not bitter like the rest of us." I justified, sipping from my glass of eggnog.

"A little weird is an understatement," Alex said with a shake of his head.

"Don't you have something better to do than make fun of her?" I questioned, raising my brow.

Both of them scoffed at my words but ultimately shrugged it off, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. It was a tedious and precarious balance back and forth between maintaining my presence in the group and trying to defend her, too. I wanted to do both but it wasn't always completely feasible given the resistance they put up and that April didn't always make it easy.

Picking up both of the glasses of eggnog off of the table, I turned around from them without another word and looked around the party to try and spot April again. She was tiny and had a tendency to blend in, but I could spot her at the edge of the room, arms wrapped around herself and leaning against the wall alone. I knew that she had made some efforts to try and be better friends with some of the others there, but more often than not, she had been shot down for reasons that weren't very good. That was a part of what made it hard to change.

I made my way back across the party and kept my head down to avoid further distractions in conversation, not wanting to leave her alone for too long. I wasn't sure what it was about her that made me so protective, but I felt obligated to make sure that someone was looking out for her. Maybe because no one else was.

"Here you go," I spoke as I handed her the second glass of eggnog.

"Thanks," April said with a soft smile, lifting it up and taking a sip.

Leaning against the wall next to her, I took a sip of my own. "Are you going to socialize any?" I asked, nodding to the gathered people.

"I talked a little with Derek before you go here," she answered with a shrug of her shoulders. I looked around. Derek was now talking to Mark which explained why she hadn't clung to him. "Sometimes it's easier to just be alone with these people."

"That's fair," I muttered despite the instinct to disagree, swallowing another mouthful. It definitely wasn't her scene. It wouldn't have been mine if it weren't for work.

"You're not much more social than I am. Tonight, at least." April threw out there.

Technically, she was right. It was in part because I had decided to hang around with her instead of some of the others there, but I didn't regret that decision. She deserved to have a good holiday party too and I knew that she was much more religious than the rest of us. Even though I hadn't asked about it, it did seem like a fair assumption to say that she probably had a harder time on holidays like this one without her family. But working at a hospital meant that we didn't get holidays off. That was just the way it was.

"Yeah, well," I shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly. "One of those nights, I guess."

"Do you want to see if there's any eggnog in the fridge still, grab it, and get out of here?" April asked.

That was a suggestion that I certainly wasn't expecting to hear from her. Anyone else in the group, maybe, but not her. It turned out that she was a little more like the rest of the group than we had been giving her credit for, apparently, because that was the exact kind of thing that I would have expected from Meredith or Karev.

"Sounds like a plan to me," I agreed with a chuckle, swallowing another mouthful from my glass and turning to follow her.

Moving down the familiar hallway of the frat house and to the kitchen, everything was the exact same condition as it had been before. Things were cleaned up a bit and at least now I knew it was because of the people who actually lived here, not April. She pretty much took over most of the cleaning when we had been there despite her idea of a chore wheel, and she did the same thing now with the apartment that me, her, and Alex all lived in.

I peered over April's shoulder as she opened up the refrigerator door. There was still a bottle of eggnog in there. Grinning, I moved around her to check the cupboards for the liquor I knew that Meredith almost always had in some place or another. It doesn't take long to find a half-full bottle of bourbon.

"This'll work," I grinned at her, holding the bottle up.

Both of us paused to swallow the remainder of the eggnog that we already had in our glass. It was strong stuff compared to most Christmas parties that I had been to in my life, but it was fitting given who was hosting it. I let her pour eggnog into the glass again before topping it off with bourbon again and grabbing a spoon from the kitchen, giving them a quick stir to mix up the alcohol better with the rest of the drink. I sipped it for a taste before giving a nod of approval, and she did the same.

"This is good," she murmured, wetting her lips.

"It's eggnog and bourbon. Kind of hard to screw up," I mused.

"Yeah, well, don't let me drink too much," she remarked. "I don't want to get drunk. It just tastes good."

"I won't," I laughed. "But I'm guessing most of us are spending the night here."

"Probably," April agreed with a nod of her head. "Everyone's drinking a lot. Which I guess is kind of typical of how most of our social gatherings go, given this is the first one that we've had outside of Joe's in a long time."

I nodded along with her. "I guess we're all a group of budding alcoholics." I chuckled inappropriately.

The two of us fell quiet for a moment, just sipping at the eggnog in our glasses in the quiet of the kitchen with the noise and chatter from the party overflowing from the other room. Even if it wasn't exactly pushing her to get out there and fit in with the rest of the group, well, at least I was saving her from being harassed by the group of them. Though they weren't always quite so bad when it came to one on one, it was usually in the group that they were the worst.

"Hey, look at that," April commented, pointing upward.

Following the direction of her finger, my gaze turned upward to some of the decorations. On the ceiling just above the pair of us was a string of mistletoe. It had probably been thrown up there impossibly, intended for Meredith and Derek, or maybe Lexie and Sloan, but instead, it was hanging between the two of us instead. My lips pressed together in a tight line for just a minute. I knew what the tradition was. Anyone who hadn't been living under a rock knew it.

"Mistletoe," I breathed out.

"Yeah," she murmured shyly.

Without thinking much about it, I set down my glass of eggnog and leaned down, I pressed my lips over hers in a firm kiss. We had never done anything like that before – hell, I had never even though about doing something like that, yet at the moment, it just felt like the right thing to do. I was the one who wanted to give her a good Christmas party, after all.

Her initial response to the kiss was stillness. But after a moment or two to realize what I was doing, April timidly returned the kiss, lifting up her chin to make it a little easier to meet. Her hand placed itself on my cheek gently, not pulling me in deeper but holding me there kindly. That softness and reciprocation from her were just as much of a surprise as my own impulsive decision. But it doesn't scare me away from it. Instead, it just made me feel secure in the decision.

A few seconds passed and we stayed there with our lips pressed softly into one another's. I could taste eggnog on her lips, and I was sure she could taste the same on mine, but I knew for a fact that hers happened to be much softer than my own.

"What was that?" The words were a whisper when April finally pulled away.

"You pointed out the mistletoe," I reminded her, wetting my lips as I drew away and straightened up again. "I believe that happens to be a mistletoe tradition. Or are things different on the farm?" I teased.

"It's not always about the farm," she huffed out with a little bit of laughter. "I just… I didn't expect that. That's not what I meant when I was pointing it out, I just… was."

My shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. "Sure you were. Tell me you didn't like that."

"I–" The syllable was stuttered out of her lips and she dropped her gaze, clearly embarrassed and shaking her head. "No, that's not what I was saying, I just meant that I wasn't, like, trying to make you kiss me or anything out of… pity, or whatever. I didn't want you to think that. I'm sorry, I'm talking too much."

"You're not talking too much," I disagreed with a shake of my head. "Did you like it?" I asked directly.

"I… I don't know how to answer that." Her head continued to shake as she spoke.

"A yes or a no will usually suffice in most situations," I answered.

April pushed her lips together in a thin line. "You're my best friend, Jackson," she admitted sheepishly. "I don't want to ruin that and I don't want things to be weird between the two of us. I mean, you're really the only friend that I have here and I don't want to lose that or mess that up. That makes it a lot more complicated than just giving you a simple yes or no." She rambled on, hands moving as she spoke to emphasize her point.

I shouldn't have been surprised that she would make a big deal out of it. She could be al little overreactive with things from time to time, which was a little ironic given that it looked like she was going to go and specialize in trauma, which required a surgeon to be completely levelheaded when utter chaos came in.

"You can be honest." I shrugged my shoulders. "Because I liked it."

That was more honesty than I probably would have given in front of anyone else in our group of people, but there was something kind of nice about kissing her. I knew that she was a virgin and she probably didn't have a lot of experience doing anything with men, but she was soft and sweet, warm and welcoming at the same time, despite being a virgin. It wasn't some huge deal breaker for me.

"Really?" April questioned, looking up at me.

"Yeah," I nodded. "I did."

"Oh," she breathed out. "I… I kind of did too, yeah." Her bottom lip rolled between her teeth for a moment, glancing down at the glasses that we had been drinking from. She seemed embarrassed still, even after I had admitted to lying it.

"There's nothing wrong with that," I offered with a smile and picked up my drink, taking another drink from the glass. "Nothing wrong with not liking it, either, if you're lying to try and cushion my ego."

"No, no!" April refuted quickly with a shake of her head. "I'm not, I swear, I'm not."

Setting down my glass on the counter again, I gave a glance at the doorway to ensure that no one else was watching the two of us. Then I dipped down my head again and pressed my lips into hers again, placing another firm kiss against her soft, supple lips. She returned it just as she had the first time, not quite as shy or timid, returning it. I deepened the kiss between us, cupping the back of her neck with her hand. I could feel her front press into my chest more firmly than before, gaining confidence with each second that passed.

This time when our lips parted from one another's again, each of us was panting for air, trying to cease the burning in our lungs. I don't straighten up immediately, head still tilted forward with my forehead pressed against hers. Her eyes were huge as she looked right back up at me, speechless.

"This doesn't have to ruin our friendship, you know?" I finally spoke when I was capable of wrapping my mind around things, taking a deep breath and keeping my hand on her even as I straightened up again. She was staring at me, not quite fearfully, but something… I couldn't name it. I hadn't seen it in her eyes before tonight, though. Whether that was good or bad was hard to determine.

"Are you sure?" April asked, her eyebrows forming a deep furrow.

"Yeah, I'm sure." I gave her a smile as I nodded my heads, this time placing a kiss on her forehead. "Why don't we get back to the party now, okay? Before anyone noticed we were gone."

"Yeah, okay," she agreed. "Whatever you say."


End file.
